Cheering Pop-Tyrant Simon Cowell's Submission to Rage

If there's one thing we can be sure of, Simon Cowell's not asking
for a Rage Against the Machine album this Christmas. The Los Angeles
funk rock outfit trounced Cowell's pop star prodigy, Joe McElderry,
selling 500,000 singles in Britain compared to McElderry's 450,000. Why
do the numbers matter? It's all about Britain's time-honored tradition
of closely watching holiday music sales.

In December, the British buy more music singles than at any other month
in the year. For decades the competition was fierce, with bands like
Blur and Oasis locked into closely-watched races. However, the winners
have become more predictable in
recent years. The number-one seller has routinely been whoever won
Simon Cowell's American Idol-style talent show The X Factor. But this
year, Jon Morter and is wife were not going to let that happen. Sick of
the sanitized, commercial offerings of Cowell's show, they started a
grassroots Facebook campaign to encourage Brits to buy Rage Against the
Machine's expletive-infused single "Killing in the Name" en masse. The
anti-corporate metal-rock anthem features the lyric "f*ck you I won't
do what you
tell me"--a less-than-covert blast at Cowell's brand of mass produced music.

Initially Cowell was infuriated by the Morters' campaign. But after
losing the competition he congratulated the couple and even offered
them a job. By and large, the blogosphere is reacting with delight to the British couple's success:

Finally, the End of the Cowell Pop Machine, celebrates David Rudge at NBC News: "With guaranteed TV exposure and the guiding hand of the show's
omnipotent host Simon Cowell, the ballad (it's always a ballad) sung by
a pretty face, inevitably outsells all its rivals.

A Record Breaking Event, notes NME magazine: "In taking the title for 2009, 'Killing in the Name' also set two new
landmarks, becoming the U.K.'s first download-only Christmas Number One
and notching up the biggest one-week download sales total in British
chart history, according to the Official Charts Company."

McElderry Was Bound to Lose, jokes Glen Levy at Time, commenting on McElderry's hit single: "Perhaps a slightly closer look at
his own song's lyrics would have provided a taste of what was to come. For
as 'The Climb' tells us, 'Always gonna be an uphill battle / Sometimes I'm
gonna have to lose.'"

Rage Against Which Machine? asks Paul Gargano
at The Examiner: "In an interesting bit of irony, the Morter's desire
to take down one
machine has helped to strengthen another - both singles are Sony Music
Entertainment properties, with Rage Against The Machine calling Epic
home, and McElderry signed to Simon Cowell's Syco Music, a Sony label."
The observation is even funnier considering the words of Tom Morello,
guitarist of Rage, who rallied his fans to support the "big guy" over
the "little guy." Morello said: "Finish line is in sight! Will David
smite Goliath? Will Luke Skywalker
destroy the Death Star? Will Frodo defeat Sauron? UK-it's now or
never," he posted Saturday."

Bookies Took a Hit, notes Joanna Devane at ABC News: "Not many expected Rage Against the Machine to trump Cowell's
corporate might. Some bookmakers opened with odds of 150/1, and the
betting industry is estimated to have lost £1 million on the upset.

Look for the Next Grassroots Takeover in America, writes Rick Ellis at All Your TV: "The methods used by the Rage campaign in Britain would also work in the
U.S. So it's probably only a matter of time until some campaign springs
up in America to drive some unexpected track to the top of the music
charts."

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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